Yemen’s Houthi rebels, another of Iran’s terror proxies avowedly seeking to destroy Israel, have been targeting the country since soon after Hamas’s October 7 invasion and slaughter. And Israel had elected not to strike back, even after a missile scored a direct hit on Eilat in March.
But in the early hours of Friday morning, an apparently upgraded Houthi drone evaded Israel’s defenses — for reasons thus far ascribed by the IDF to “human error” — and exploded in Tel Aviv, striking an apartment bloc and killing a 50-year-old Israeli, Yevgeny Ferder. The Houthis declared that this marked a “new phase” in their operations against Israel.
At this point, Israeli security chiefs are reported to have told cabinet ministers who gathered in an emergency session on Shabbat afternoon, restraint was no longer an option.
Israel’s air force had therefore just targeted the Red Sea port of Hodeida, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the nation in a recorded video statement after Shabbat had ended, because it was the entry point for Iranian weaponry used by the Houthis against Israel and other Iranian enemies in the region. The US-led coalition trying to thwart Houthi attacks on international shipping in the Red Sea has not operated against the port in western Yemen, in part at least because it is also used for civilian purposes.
Hitting facilities over 1,800 kilometers (1,100 miles) away, the strike was among the most complicated ever carried out by Israel, the IDF Spokesman Daniel Hagari said.
Israel plainly recognizes the potential for its unprecedented direct retaliation against the Houthis to trigger still further escalation. It informed the United States ahead of Saturday’s strike, and is understood to have given advance warning to others in the region as well.
Attorney General Gali Baharav-Miara is reported to have insisted that the ministers in the security cabinet gather, even on Shabbat, to formally approve the operation, since she deemed that forum’s support legally essential given the potential for wider consequent conflict.
Israeli military chiefs have said privately in recent months that one of the problems of grappling with the Houthis is that they do not appear to be particularly susceptible to deterrence. Indeed, following Saturday’s Israeli strike, a senior Houthi leader vowed that Israel would “pay the price” and that “we will meet escalation with escalation.”
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